


Designation

by dracoqueen22



Series: This Calamitous Life [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, First Meetings, Gen, Mild Gore, Name Changes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 16:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4399379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracoqueen22/pseuds/dracoqueen22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New scrap in the arena and Sunstreaker thinks he might have found his next protege.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Designation

**Author's Note:**

> For Werewolf Anon's Flash Fiction Prompt of Megatron/Sunstreaker, Nickelback's “Edge of a Revolution”

“Who's the newbie?” Sunstreaker asked.   
  
He leaned just inside the tunnel that headed back into the understructure, but his attention was currently captured by the mech getting his aft handed to him out in the arena.   
  
Said loser was two-thirds again the size of his opponent, but the miner – obvious by the black and yellow stripes all over his dirty paint – was barely keeping on his pedes. He took hits he should have dodged, probably relying on his heavy armor to protect himself, and he didn't take advantage of the openings Trencher was leaving him.   
  
Sunstreaker had fought Trencher before. The former construction worker hit hard, but he was slow and cocky. Once you learned how to outsmart him, he was easy to beat. Sunstreaker's manager didn't bother to set up matches against him anymore. Unless the crowd wanted a little show and was offering extra for Sunstreaker to drag it out.   
  
Trencher's opponent, though, it was pretty obvious he'd never done this before. His stance was slag, his attacks were clumsy, and he was letting Trencher's trash talk get to him. But there was something about him anyway that piqued Sunstreaker's interest. Maybe because he hadn't had a protege in a while. Not since Spin-Out walked into the business end of a buzzsaw.   
  
“New scrap from two flats down,” Grater said with a rasping laugh. The fellow gladiator towered over Sunstreaker by several helms, but he'd never once beat Sunstreaker in the ring. It stopped being a point of contention between them when Sunstreaker let Grater bend him over a berth. An overload or two and all was forgiven.   
  
Sunstreaker's lipplate curled toward a sneer as he watched the miner take another elbow to the faceplate. He heard the crunch of the impact. A gush of energon followed.   
  
“What for?”   
  
“Extra chits, I guess. Lotsa underdwellers thinkin' they can come here for an easy chit. An easy way out.”   
  
Sunstreaker snorted. “Don't they know this is all the same salvage heap as what they got below?”   
  
Grater laughed. “Mebbe they think this death is better. I dunno. You're the weird one who crawled down. Errybody else trying to climb up.” He pushed off the wall, clacking his spindly fingers together. “Fight's bout done,” he said as he walked away.   
  
“Sure is,” Sunstreaker agreed.   
  
The miner wobbled. Trencher smirked. He had a gleam in his optic and Sunstreaker didn't need two guesses to figure what was coming.   
  
Trencher's signature move. His favorite take down.   
  
The miner hit the arena floor with a thunderous splat, face-first. The treads on his back juddered. Trencher's pede planted between them, shoving him down.   
  
“Yield,” he snarled, grinding against the mech's spinal strut.   
  
The miner thrust one fist out across the floor, armor scraping against the energon-stained metal. Slowly, as though it pained him to submit, he opened his fingers and turned his palm upward.   
  
Yield.   
  
The crowd cheered. The horn blasted. Trencher won. It was a foregone conclusion.   
  
Trencher strode off, quadruple fists pumped in the air to celebrate his victory. He left his opponent behind, the miner coughing up a tacky, gritty energon. He was a pockmark of dented panels and yep, someone was going to have to look at his left arm. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't be able to go back to work.   
  
He was having trouble getting up. He managed to get a knee beneath him. An elbow, too. But he wasn't moving fast enough.  
  
Sunstreaker skated into the center of the ring, spinning a fast circle around the mech. “What's your name, scrap?” he asked.   
  
One red optic looked up at him. “Don't have one.” His vocals were dark, gritty as the mine dust clinging to his paint.   
  
Sunstreaker shivered. Mmm, but he imagined what those vocals would sound like in the midst of pleasure. Purring right in his audial. Maybe against his armor. Nice. But first...  
  
“Well,” he said as he spun another circle around the miner and then came to a sliding halt directly in front of his face. “That's what you're gonna be if ya don't get up in twenty kliks. They'll sweep you up like the rest of the garbage.” He jerked his helm, gesturing to the drones skittering around the arena, sweeping up bits and pieces of broken mech.   
  
There was a harsh grinding noise before the scrap managed to push himself to his knees. One optic was cracked. Energon bled from the corner of his mouth. His ventilations sounded hoarse and rattling. Or maybe that was just because of his vocation.   
  
“Why do you care?” the scrap asked.   
  
Sunstreaker rolled his shoulders. “Don't care,” he said. “But don't ya think you're in the wrong place? Aren't no easy chits to earn here.”   
  
“There are no easy chits anywhere.” Laboriously, the scrap climbed to his pedes. He towered over Sunstreaker by a helm and a half, which would have been intimidating, if he hadn't just watched one of the worst undercards tumble the scrap down.   
  
Sunstreaker jerked his helm toward the tunnel exit. “Come on. Let's talk.”   
  
The scrap balked. “Why?”   
  
“Because you probably don't want to die and if you keep on like you are, you will,” Sunstreaker said. He rolled his shoulders again and skated past the scrap. “Or don't follow me and next time, your energon can feed the cleaning drones. Your call.”   
  
He sped for the exit, slapping hands with Aggregate, the next gladiator up on the docket. Sunstreaker didn't much like the spiky mech, but Aggregate had a lot of pull around here. Best not to antagonize those with connections. Sunstreaker had few of his own.   
  
Unsurprisingly, he wasn't a popular mech around here. Not quite undercard, but not a candidate for next tier dockets either. He planned on changing that soon though. All he needed was that upgrade.   
  
“Out of the way, scrap.”   
  
Sunstreaker spun and skated backward in just enough time to see Aggregate roughly shoulder-check the miner, who stumbled but held his ground. There was a moment of posturing before Aggregate growled and continued on, leaving the scrap to finish his slow shuffle out of the arena. Just in time, too, as the shutters almost clipped his aft on the way down.   
  
Death matches were always closed off.   
  
Sunstreaker folded his arms and cocked an orbital ridge. “Change your mind?”   
  
“What are you offering?” the miner asked.   
  
His optic flicked around, reading the dark corridors, the shambling beggars keeping to the shadows. Down the hall, a clutch of buymechs huddled together. One was missing.   
  
Sunstreaker bet a round of engex he'd been taken by Trencher. That mech was a user, 'cept his addiction wasn't in stimulants, but pleasure. One was slightly more affordable than the other. Mech like Trencher could take a buymech even if he didn't have chits to offer. Syk peddlers were a little better defended.   
  
“Advice.” Sunstreaker turned down the corridor, away from the buymechs. He gestured for the mech to follow him. “Come on. I'll get you cleaned up.”   
  
“Awful friendly of you.”   
  
Sunstreaker flashed him a grin. “Maybe I'm a sweetspark.” He winked and swapped out his wheels for pedes. Easier for the miner to keep up with him. “What am I gonna call you, scrap?”   
  
“Not scrap,” he grunted, but he fell in step behind Sunstreaker. “Don't got a name. Just an ID code. Supervisor calls me D-12.”   
  
Sunstreaker cringed. “That's awful. Pick something else.”   
  
“You think I chose this?”   
  
Sunstreaker spun back around, walking backward. He knew these corridors too well to get tripped up. Besides, most mechs knew to get out of his way anyway. He gestured to himself, intake to ventrum.   
  
“Sunstreaker,” he said. “And yeah, I chose it. You don't wanna know what they used to call me.”   
  
“Maybe I do.”   
  
Sunstreaker grinned, but it was all denta. In fact, no one he knew would even call it a grin. “You don't. So, D-12, pick something else.”   
  
The mech tilted his helm, optics that eerie shade of weld-fire red. He wasn't the first miner Sunstreaker had seen, but he was certainly the smartest.   
  
Sunstreaker stopped and the miner slowed as well, pausing only when he was within arms reach of Sunstreaker. His rattling ventilations seemed to get worse.   
  
“There is a legend,” he said, slowly and carefully, as though selecting each glyph with precision. “A mech who was powerful beyond reason. Megatronus.”   
  
Both of Sunstreaker's orbital ridges rose. “Power beyond reason. And you think that's you? Megatronus, you've got a long way to go.”   
  
“If I am not mistaken, you indicated an interest in teaching me.”   
  
“I did.” Sunstreaker circled the newly dubbed Megatronus, giving him an assessing look. Beyond the walls of the corridor, he heard the crowd cheering.   
  
Someone was certainly having a good time.   
  
“You're strong,” Sunstreaker observed, measuring the broad, sturdiness of Megatron's legs and the heavy hydraulics around his shoulders. “You're built to take a beating, but that don't mean slag if you can't dish it back. And if you can't direct your opponent's attacks.”   
  
He circled back around to face Megatronus, whose even gaze was almost unnerving. Megatronus acted as though he feared nothing. And perhaps he didn't. It took serious bolts to venture up to the Pits without so much as a sponsor.   
  
“But yeah, I might be able to make something of ya. If you're willing to listen and learn.” Sunstreaker folded his arms and tilted his helm. “What ya want the chits for?”   
  
“I don't see how that's any of your business.”   
  
Sunstreaker leaned forward. He was well aware he couldn't loom, but sometimes, getting up in a mech's personal space was an effective tactic. It worked, too, because Megatronus backed up a step.   
  
“I say it is.”   
  
Megatronus frowned. For the first time, he fidgeted. He chuffed a burst of air, stirring the idle particulates in the air. “I want a pass.”   
  
“To take a lift?” Sunstreaker scoffed. “What the frag for? You think you can find something better up there? You think they'll let you try something better?”   
  
Megatronus looked away from Sunstreaker. He worked his intake. His hands pulled in and out of fists. Only then did Sunstreaker get a whiff of his field, desperation tinged with embarrassment, but beneath it all, longing. This fragging piece of scrap actually dared to hope. He thought his spark was worth something.   
  
“I want--” Megatronus broke off with a frustrated huff. “There is more to my existence than the endless dark. I would see the stars.”   
  
Sunstreaker had no words. What a romantic notion. Who knew that such a thing lurked in the spark of a miner, a mech considered expendable. After all, they could always make more.   
  
Megatronus was a far cry from Sunstreaker, who thought he'd find his peace down in the dirty dark.   
  
“All right, Megatronus. I'll see what I can do to make that happen.” Sunstreaker stuck out a hand, offering to seal the deal. “You might be crazier than I am, but who am I to say no to something so pure, ne?”   
  
Megatronus eyed him suspiciously, but he clasped Sunstreaker's elbow, allowing Sunstreaker to clasp him in return. Perhaps he expected Sunstreaker to mock him. And well, Sunstreaker probably would have, if it wasn't for Sideswipe. But that was a long story he wasn't about to tell Megatronus. It wasn't none of his business.   
  
“I thank you,” Megatronus said.   
  
Sunstreaker snorted. “Don't thank me yet. You haven't even begun training. We'll see how much you hate me afterward.”   
  
It might even be a little fun.   
  


****


End file.
